When two people's spoken languages are alien to one another, perhaps they can connect through dance. If I do a workshop in Serbia or France, those attending do not always understand everything I say, but we share a lot through the common language of the body. As a dyslexic I have always found written English difficult, but inside I always had something to say. By gesturing through hands and eyes, I found I could say things with my body that I could not say in any other way.

I use the ancient dance language of kathak, which is steeped in history, tradition and technique, but I am also a 21st-century artist trying to say things to people living today. Being an Indian classical dancer does not mean I have to restrict my dance practice to traditional work, but I want my ancient dance language to be versatile enough to say non-traditional things, perhaps even modern things. This is what so many others before me have done, and so many artists do today.

In my early 20s, I was cast in a piece choreographed by Kumudini Lakhia and was spotted by Akram Khan. He later asked me to perform a kathak solo at Sadler's Wells in 2009. Akram, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Russell Maliphant all agreed to make a solo on my body a couple of years later. It was very hard to get a new vocabulary sitting inside my body and a new cultural way of thinking about dance. I suppose they could see that my body could move differently from other classical Indian dancers. Their frustration in me could be justified – I found it difficult to grasp not just the movement but also their way of explaining things. It took time. All their choreographies sit in my body better now. After 75 odd shows, they'd better do!

A new vocabulary for the body … Aakash Odedra in the studio. Photograph: Sean Goldthorpe

Absorbing these languages, absorbing a new way of thinking about dance, had been playing on my mind for a long time. My producer was introduced to the organisation Ars Electronica by the South Asian arts agency Sampad. They discussed how ancient forms of Indian classical dance, once performed in intimate temple settings, were best viewed in their traditional forms in these intimate settings. Modern touring means performing in front of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. Small hand gestures and subtle eye movements can tell something profound but at the back of a main-house theatre you might miss it. With new media, you can make the eye so big you can see a greater level of detail never experienced before – it's a kind of exaggerated and warped reality.

To me, this suggested the dyslexic world: how letters on a page are processed differently by my brain. I was joined in my early experiments by Lewis Major, and we agreed we could co-choreograph the piece, which became Murmur. I wanted to work with another choreographer to make the other half of a double bill. I had always found the work of Damien Jalet most interesting. Lucky for me he said yes – and we created Inked. He is a very giving choreographer.

Murmur and Inked are designed to convey a message that intelligence has multiple forms and that sensitivity of the body raises one's self-awareness. We will share a story that isn't only mine or that of a dyslexic, but a journey that is universal through its emotion.